Stephen Maher: Difficult days ahead for the government and First Nations

Photograph by: Adrian Wyld
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

The first young men to leave Chief Theresa Spence’s compound on Victoria Island this morning looked like warriors, proud and defiant.

They walked through the crowd, which parted for them, then led the march across the river to Parliament Hill in the freezing rain, walking beside drummers singing a Cree honour song, high and mournful and haunting.

People in the crowd told me they came to support Idle No More, to demand the government respect their treaties, to protest legislation that threatens the environment.

On Thursday night, at a fractious meeting at an Ottawa hotel, chiefs from across Canada split on whether leaders should attend a meeting with Harper on Friday. Pam Palmater, the Mi’kmaw university professor who Shawn Atleo defeated to become national chief, and who now seems to be functioning as the leader of the opposition, said Atleo lacked a mandate to go and could be removed from office.

A large, vocal minority of chiefs believe, like Spence, that the chiefs shouldn’t meet with the prime minister unless the governor general is in the room.

The prime minister twice bent to Spence’s will, first agreeing to a meeting with chiefs, then arranging for the governor general to hold a ceremonial meeting afterwards.

I suspect it would have been difficult for the prime minister to make a concession that would have won the approval of Spence, whose liquid-only hunger strike has inspired first nations people across the country.

The marchers who I spoke with, though, said they thought Atleo was right to go to the meeting.

The debate about the meeting seems to be driven by internal politics within the Assembly of First Nations.

Atleo, who comes from a non-treaty British Columbia band, seems to be more pragmatic and flexible than the treaty bands to the east, whose relationship with the government is more poisonous. His career is on the line.

Thursday night, several prominent chiefs, including Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus, who ran against Atleo, and Manitoba Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, who might run against him next time, announced they would support Spence and stay away from the meeting.

“We have the power,” Nepinak told reporters. “The Idle No More movement has the people and the numbers that can bring the Canadian economy to its knees.”

On Friday, after the marchers arrived on Parliament Hill, they gathered in front of the Langevin Building, where the prime minister was preparing to meet with Atleo and other chiefs.

Nepinak, looking impressive in a feathered headdress, came to the front door, where four Mounties had wisely decided to make a strategic retreat.

Nepinak, who could have been in the meeting room, banged on the big wooden doors.

“We’re asking the prime minister to come out here,” he said, and then gave TV interviews.

One door was open but Nepinak was banging on one that was closed, making a show of being turned away.

By having some leaders at the table and others in the street, aboriginals are presenting a strong negotiating position. Atleo can say to the prime minister: Do you hear the knocking on the door? You can work with us or them.

During the meeting, the assembly released a list of eight “elements of consensus”: a working group for enforcing treaties, reform of the land claims process, resource revenue sharing, repeal of legislation that violates treaty rights, a “transformed fiscal relationship,” a commission of inquiry into violence against indigenous women, a school in every community and a cabinet committee responsible for first nation-Crown relations.

This is a careful list, no doubt worked out with great difficulty. It would be difficult for the prime minister to agree to it. This is not his agenda, which may be difficult for him to accept, and after the meeting Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said little except that the prime minister will meet with Atleo again.

It would be difficult to give the chiefs nothing, and let the radicals take over.

Everything is difficult. As former auditor general Sheila Fraser explained in an exhaustive 2011 audit, the systems by which Ottawa provides services to First Nations are broken.

Ottawa is doing a terrible job providing health services, clean water, education and housing to aboriginals, and it is not getting better.

Some communities are doing very well, usually because they have good leadership and an independent source of income, but in too many others, the people live in misery.

According to an audit of Attawapiskat, Spence, the symbolic leader of this protest, did not manage her community’s finances in an acceptable way, which means she is at least partly responsible for the terrible state of housing there.

To fix any of this, to mend poisoned relations and build systems that work for people now suffering, first nations and the government have to build enough trust to work together. To do that, the prime minister would have to approve expensive measures that do not advance the interests of his electoral coalition, and first nations would have to set aside their dislike of the prime minister and agree on agenda that can be sold to divided chiefs.

It’s all difficult, but the alternatives — continued misery and increasing strife — are worse.

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